Research Highlight: Nan Zhu
By Katherine Schreiner
Associate Professor Nan Zhu has worked with the Center for the Business of Sustainability for multiple years. Currently, he teaches actuarial science, focusing on long-term actuarial mathematics. Professor Zhu was named one of the three 2023 Penn State Teaching Fellows. He will also be receiving the Penn State Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Zhu's recent research is published in Operations Research (2022), under the title of Modeling the Risk in Mortality Projections. This paper goes in-depth on the study between the fields of actuarial science and insurance economics. More specifically, he researches life insurance markets, longevity risk, policyholder behavior, and models of insurance choices.
The paper presents stochastic models that analyze the risk associated with long-term mortality projection. They present a series of mortality forecasts from the past 50 years and apply them in a forward modeling framework.
"Our models contrast with conventional stochastic mortality models that are built on age-specific realized mortality rates," Professor Zhu states. "ones that might fail to identify the persistence and transiency of random mortality shocks."
Zhu believes that sustainability is crucial in life insurance and actuarial science. Sustainability supports long-term financial stability and risk.
When asked about the role of sustainability in his research, Zhu said, "We believe that the dynamics of our model is capable in reflecting the substantial observed variability of long-term projections and are therefore particularly well-suited and present as a financially sustainable approach for applications where long-term demographic uncertainty is relevant."
For more information or any questions, reach out to Nan Zhu at nanzhu@psu.edu.
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